According to a team of scientists, they have been successful in developing a highly effective male contraceptive pill that comes with no side effects!
The experiments have been conducted on lab mice and are expected to enter human trials by the end of 2022.
This marks a huge step in expanding birth control options and also responsibilities for men.
Scientists have been interested in a male contraceptive pill ever since the female one was approved back in the 1960s, says Md Abdullah Al Noman.
The new findings will be presented in the American Chemical Society’s spring meeting by the University of Minnesota graduate student.
“Multiple studies showed that men are indeed interested in sharing the responsibility of birth control with their partners,” he noted.
Unfortunately, for the longest time, men have only had two available options – condoms and vasectomies and reversing the latter is not only not always successful, but it is also expensive.
Since the female contraceptive pill works by disrupting the menstrual cycle, scientists have been trying to target the hormone testosterone when working on making a male equivalent.
The issue with this approach, however, has been that it can come with an array of side effects such as weight gain, increased levels of low-density lipoprotein – a type of cholesterol – that increases risks of heart disease, and depression!
Of course, as you may be aware, the female pill comes with many side effects as well, such as blood clots, but the risks are generally calculated differently for women since they also face the risk of getting pregnant otherwise.
But instead of targeting testosterone, Noman, who works in Professor Gunda Georg’s lab, targeted a protein known as “retinoic acid receptor (RAR) alpha” to try and make a non-hormonal drug.
Noman and Georg developed a compound together that blocks the action of RAR-alpha as they discovered that male mice without it are sterile.
Their YCT529 chemical has been designed to specifically interact with RAR-alpha only and not the other related receptors known as RAR-beta and RAR-gamma, which greatly minimizes all the potential risks.
Mice were administered YCT529 for four weeks which drastically reduced their sperm counts to the point that it was 99 percent effective in preventing pregnancy in the mating trial that followed.
Appetite, weight and activity and other side effects such as headaches or mood changes were monitored and no changes were observed.
Four to six weeks after being taken off the drug, the make mice could reproduce once more.
